TV Review: HIGH FIDELITY: Season 1: A Fresh Take on a Classic Film’s Ode to Music & Navigating Relationships [Hulu]

High Fidelity Season 1 Review

Hulu‘s High Fidelity: Season 1 stars Zoe Kravitz in a TV series based on the novel of the same name by Nick Hornsby about a female record store owner who talks directly into the camera as she chronicles her past relationships. Like a remix of a classic song you return to time and again, this modern take on the classic film (and book) reinvents the wheel in multiple ways: by flipping the gender perspective and by framing the story through the lens of a biracial and bisexual female, but still maintaining what was at the original’s core – a love of music and a revisit of memorable break-ups to explain how the protagonist’s wounded psyche got so in the first place.

Played by a charming and irreverent Zoe Kravitz, who for the first time proves that she can carry an entire show, Rob owns a record store in present day Brooklyn at a time when record stores are failing, and is fresh out of a breakup. Like the original film’s storyline, Rob decides to revisit her top five breakups to try to understand her wants and needs and why she doesn’t seem ready for a committed relationship.

What’s impressive about the show is that it takes the formerly white heterosexual male story and actually makes it work for a female narrative. Making a character black or queer or trans in a movie or show that is otherwise white or straight or cis can often feel like transparent pandering. Here, however, race and gender are taken into thoughtful consideration. In and of itself, and as silly as it may seem to point out, the fact that the show depicts a biracial, bisexual woman who is as knowledgeable (if not more) about music as most dudes is a surprisingly important step.

Furthermore, the show takes the co-worker role of Barry, originally played by Jack Black in the film, and turns it into Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s Cherise, whose wisecracking, larger than life African-American female with her own insecurities about becoming a singer, has one of the most interesting character arcs in the show. The other original film co-worker Dick is recast as Simon, played by a layered David H. Holmes, one of Rob’s top five heartbreaks who turns out to be queer. As an homage to the original film, Simon espouses the idea that John Cusack’s character originally had in the film – he builds an entire identity around what kind of music, movies, books a person likes and then finds any other idea of compatibility absurd.

The soundtrack to High Fidelity is exhilarating and it will make you fall in love with music all over again – even more so when Rob takes on a patronizing douchebag in the notorious Carlyle Bar and schools him on rock and roll. One scene that will delight any music nerd is when a customer is scorned for looking for Michael Jackson given what we now know about him – and Rob points out that Cherise still listens to Kanye West despite his affinity for President Donald Trump, and Simon argues that if we were only allowed to listen to music by unquestionably nice people the entire store would have to destroy most of its albums, save those by Bono and Phil Collins.

Hearing the co-workers and Rob play their favorite music, everything from Otis Brown and Fleetwood Mac to Dexys Midnight Runners, Sinead O’Connor, Celine Dion, Frank Ocean and Outkast, the diegetic music itself is a character in the show and draws the viewer further into the emotional sound experiences the characters soundtrack their lives to. 

For anyone who has ever used music to cope, or who has been single and navigated dating in New York, you will root for Rob, you will want to kill her, you will empathize with her, you will relate. And you will immediately want to listen to the entire soundtrack on your own.

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